Destination Sol - Story System Ideas

[theBoypui]

I really want to try adding some sort of story into the game, these are my ideas for how it might be possible.

Looking at how the game plays, it's procedurally generated, so it's a little bit more difficult and counter to the system to make one singular plot, the way I understand it. My idea would be to do something a little different. Working with the idea of procedural generation, what if you had audio clips with little bits of story linked to different Systems or planets?

Disparate tiny stories scattered about the System, the player can shoot down special ships that drop loot that triggers the audio. Does this make sense? I really wanna see if this is at all possible, I'd be able to write and record these little stories if someone can program them in.

 

[Cervator]

Welcome! Thanks for the idea

Audio in a very international project can be tricky. Even if you can get some translators for some of the major non-English languages the quality and consistency will be way off. With text you can translate much easier with far greater consistency, and at a far more granular level. Audio you pretty much need to re-record in larger pieces if something ever needs to change. File sizes are naturally also far greater with audio, although that's less of a concern nowadays.

It is a plenty cool concept, and it could be very enjoyable for the audience able to understand it, but it wouldn't reach as many as more typical features. One nice trick I like is using one or more "gibberish" languages (think alien tongues and such) that nobody understands + subtitles / log entries/ etc (all in text). In that case having different people do audio for different gibberish languages shouldn't be consistent and you can get as artsy with your invented words and flow as you want

Considering lore from a high level with Destination Sol, accepting that it is an open source project so really any idea is welcome if somebody is willing to put in the effort, I'd personally like to see different factions / clans with small stories, presented in a variety of formats, but all ultimately driven by text. You could add in flavor images, in-game events, short radio broadcasts (possibly those flavor languages with subtitles), and so on, but full-fledged stories in audio I think would be tricky. Placing it all in correct star systems in a fitting way shouldn't be too difficult, especially if the stories are tagged appropriately ("Story x would fit with any pirate type faction in a binary star system"). Adding more star systems is easy, we just need more content to fill them with.

 

[theBoypui]

"I'd personally like to see different factions / clans with small stories, presented in a variety of formats, but all ultimately driven by text."

Aye aye. I'll start from here and update the thread when I've scrobbled something together.

 

[theBoypui]

Alrighty, following the open-ended, community development, nature of Destination Sol I'll be scribbling stuff here. Anyone can leave a comment.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JA6hKr4qZJL7996GuV44Rik_RZaOspMDJinTulFfBTo/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Cervator]

Cool

@SuperSnark did some lore writing for Terasology some time ago, but that's most our lore activity ever. Often in an area like that you could be the only one spending time on it, so don't get discouraged if there are few comments. Pretty much you can generally prepares some write-ups, possible poke some other contributors to see if we can prepare a system to run the lore in-game, then start submitting the text directly to GitHub in Pull Requests ready for merging into the live game.

 

[SuperSnark]

@theBoypui : I read over the Google Doc and I like the concepts you're describing. The Red/Blue opposing factions with opposing ideologies reflected in ship design etc. works well for this concept.

It may be that we have three humanoid factions to begin with; the Red/Blue and maybe a Neutral faction. I love the idea of allowing the player to choose a faction. Maybe that opens access to certain ships/stations/etc. while closing out the opposing faction's. As long as either path is valid and gameplay is balanced I think that'd be a great addition.

We could also have a fourth faction - some type of ancient alien race that predates humaniods. Maybe it still exists on the more remote areas / fringes of the universe. This could be the coded language that Cervator refers to. Maybe it's decipherable (like in Fez) or maybe not. It might exist on monuments on planets that could be clicked. It could also become an ally or enemy of the player based on player action.

In terms of story delivery; I also like the idea of parceling it out or discovering it - rather than front loading anything. Procedurally generated worlds naturally lend themselves to exploration; but often that exploration feels empty. If we we can populate the world with little trinkets of story; whether via wrecked ships, monuments, or random NPC encounters - it might go a long way to making the world feel more legit and lived in.

One thing I don't like about games like Elite Dangerous and Minecraft is that after a point, the exploration feels very depressingly vacant; or an infinity pit of lifeless repetition. It's just so empty. I'd like to avoid that in our game if possible.

 

[Cervator]

Light & Shadow iinnnnnnnn ssppppppaaaaaaaccceee!

 

[Shadow Walker]

So my idea is a universe divided by a war that 2 factions (could add more factions later on) started, the Azurean(cybernetic humanoid looking race), the Crimsomhide(blackish skin elf looking race). When the Azurean Empire was celebrating their 700 years of reign the Crimsomhide Federation(the first rulers of all the galaxies before the Azureans attacked and took over) attacked the Azurean capital killing thousands of innocent people and nearly killed the Emperor, next day after the attack the Crimsomhides send a message saying the true rulers of the Cosmos and they would not stop until they get what’s rightfully theirs. By the remains of the remains of the blast on the Azurean capital the Azureans discovered the Crimsomhides used Black Matter weapons(the Black Matter is a rare mineral the Ancients(no one has seen an Ancient in the last 2000 years) hid on secret Vaults all across galaxies) and decided to search for Vaults to defend and strike back the Crimsomhide Federation. Here is when the Vault haunting started(Vault Raiders appear from knowing about the value of the black matter). Our main character *the name the player wants to give him/her pilot* (a young rookie pilot looking for adventure) departs from he’s/her home planet into an adventure. Here is were the player starts

 

[Cervator]

Hi @Shadow Walker

Do you have any more background details? Your story snippet reads sort of like you have something bigger in mind and/or it would be hard to relate some of that to any sort of in-game format. For instance you could indeed start out with two factions named as such, but how would the player learn about the story and how would it affect him/her beyond "Go find vaults"? What would vaults and black matter do if the player found any? How would the physical characteristics of the two races be shown in-game when you just fly small ships? How could world details come out when we're limited to showing very small planets? And so on.

Generally it is better to engage the player in a story, like slowly finding details to piece together, rather than present a wall of text with lore that may not seem relevant when starting the game.

Assuming you are "Shadowy The Chaotic Mischief" on Steam that's what I was getting at when pointing out that lore isn't necessarily hard to write, but relating it to the game in some fashion can be a lot trickier

 

[theBoypui]

I am back on the horse, will be adding more to these ideas tomorrow!